AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education

Details

The AMA Symposium is one of higher education’s leading gatherings for marketing professionals, offering a space to explore new ideas, challenge assumptions, and elevate how institutions approach brand, strategy, and engagement.

In a landscape filled with similar messages and competing voices, differentiation doesn’t come from saying more—it comes from saying something true.

At this year’s symposium, we’re connecting with marketing leaders to explore how psychometric research can uncover the deeper motivations, perceptions, and emotional drivers that shape how students choose where they belong.

By translating those insights into full-funnel marketing strategies, institutions can move beyond surface-level messaging and build a more consistent, recognizable, and authentic presence across every channel.

Breakout Session

The ROI of Data-Based Empathy: Triangulating Research and Real Results to Reach Online Students

Online programs are now table stakes—the institutions winning are the ones that build trust before a prospect ever applies. Using Moravian University as a case study (graduate revenue up from ~$2M to $12M a year by focusing on working adults and non-traditional learners, now nearly half of enrollment), this session lays out a triangulated model: Carnegie’s Experience Mapping on why prospects disengage, its new Psychographic Segmentation sorting online learners into 11 personas, and Moravian marketing leader Justine Bartholomew’s real-world playbook for converting and retaining these students. Together: who your online prospects are, why they drop off, and what actually keeps them enrolled.

Workshop

From Keywords to Conversations: How to Create Answer Engine Optimized Content That Gets Cited in LLMs

Not long ago, prospective students used to type keywords into a search bar, see a list of ten blue links, and click through to various college and university websites to gather information on where they’d like to go to school. Today, LLMs do all of that research for them. Users can engage in conversations with ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and the like, all of which scan dozens of websites and synthesize answers to complex questions in a matter of seconds.

When prospective students ask these decision-driving queries, is your institution part of the dialogue? Recent studies show that 80% of higher education content has low AI visibility, leaving many institutions absent or inaccurately represented during the earliest decision-making moments.

In this two-hour workshop, you will learn how to pivot your web and content strategies to ensure that your institution is part of AI search conversations.